Dr. Helen started a post yesterday with this startling statistic: "So now a third of all men 22-34 are living at home with little motivation to do much of anything." The WashingtonPost.com had a column by Leonard Sax who wrote about some of the reasons why more children, focusing on men, are still living with mom and dad.
Most complex issues have more than one root cause. That is part of what makes complex problems hard to solve. If there was a single contributing factor, many issues would be solved. I think one of the reasons for so many adults living with their parents is our country is prosperous, and many parents were able to pamper their children as the children grew up. The result is children didn’t learn to be competent adults. A hundred years ago few parents had the luxury of letting their children grow up without learning how to work hard. Michael Barone talks a bit about this in Hard America, Soft America: Competition vs. Coddling and the Battle for the Nation's Future. In the last couple generations parents were told that good parents made childhood one big party. The result has been many children never learned to handle adult responsibilities. And now it is very scary for some adult children to consider moving out on their own. It is easier to live under the sheltering wing of mom and dad.
At this moment there are 51 comments in response to Dr. Helen's post. At lot of the comments are about how men are treated today. In our society now there are many who treat men with contempt. In a column Doug Giles builds on this theme with an opening line of: "Can you imagine the African American uproar that would rightfully ensue if Hollywood produced a movie that painted black people as idiots that white people had to help or they just couldn’t make it life?" Doug says that many in today's society continually attack men for being men.
Doug says the best way for parents to raise sons is to train them to be Godly men, and help the young men be incredibly smart. Doug has several steps for helping sons be well education. Part of it is going against today's flow and convicing young boys that it is cool to be smart. (If you haven't checked out the comparison between Michael Jordan and Bill Gates, go here.)
Those of you with young sons, please work hard to help your boys grow into competent young men. Do it so they won't be living with you for the next forty years. (I have an ulterior motive, I want there to be lots of competent young men when my daughters grow up.)
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Technorati tags: homeschooling, homeschool, home school, home education, education, adult children, competent adults, parenting, raising sons, Leonard Sax, Doug Giles
1 comment:
Henry,
As the mother of a young son, I feel keenly the anti-man bias of Hollywood and the media at large. I first noticed it in parenting magazines, where the articles use feminine pronouns and examples about 3/4 of the time. A really obvious place to see it is in commercials, where the Dad is usually a total doofus who needs to be saved by his wife and/or kids. A big reason why I limit my son's TV viewing.
As for the young men who are still living at home--you are right about it being a complex issue. It seems to me that part of it is the spoiled thing--they think it is beneath them to have to live in a small apartment, driving a used car and shopping at Sears. By living at home, they can drive a new car and shop at Saks.
I think the best thing women can do for their children is to marry real, grown-up men in the first place. Boys will become their fathers, so marry the kind of man you would want your son to be.
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